The Washington Capitals have officially returned to the ice at MedStar Capitals Iceplex, practicing for three straight days this week.<\/p>\n
At Wednesday\u2019s skate, the first full mandatory practice, head coach Spencer Carbery put his players through line rushes, giving a glimpse at how the Capitals could line up in their return game next week. The Capitals host the Philadelphia Flyers at Capital One Arena on February 25, their first of three games in four nights.<\/p>\n
According to NHL.com\u2019s Tom Gulitti<\/a>, here is how the Capitals looked on Wednesday.<\/p>\n Capitals practice lines and defense pairings<\/p>\n McMichael<\/p>\n Dubois<\/p>\n Lapierre<\/p>\n Beauvillier<\/p>\n Sourdif<\/p>\n Leonard<\/p>\n The majority of the team\u2019s lines and pairings were fully intact at the skate, using placeholders in some spots to fill in for the three Capitals players still representing their countries at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Italy. Tom Wilson<\/a>, Logan Thompson<\/a>, and Martin Fehervary are expected back at the start of next week.<\/p>\n Wilson\u2019s spot on the right wing of the club\u2019s second line was filled by Hendrix Lapierre<\/a>, while Declan Chisholm<\/a> filled Fehervary\u2019s spot on the top defense pairing. In net, goaltender Garin Bjorklund<\/a> is still up with the team from the AHL\u2019s Hershey Bears until Thompson can retake his spot as the Capitals\u2019 number-one netminder.<\/p>\n With the Capitals set to be the healthiest they have been all season, Lapierre looks like he\u2019ll be headed to the press box once games resume. Pierre-Luc Dubois<\/a> made his return from injury in the team\u2019s last game before the break, and Connor McMichael<\/a> appears ready to go against the Flyers<\/a> after missing the last four games before the NHL\u2019s pause.<\/p>\n Capitals projected lines against Flyers<\/p>\n Beauvillier<\/p>\n Sourdif<\/p>\n Leonard<\/p>\n The Capitals will come out of the break needing to be at their best, sitting four points behind the New York Islanders for third in the Metropolitan Division and four points behind the Boston Bruins for the second wild card spot in the Eastern Conference. Carbery has made a point of emphasizing the team\u2019s week of practices before play resumes<\/a>, as the Caps try to get back into a playoff position.<\/p>\n After Thursday\u2019s skate, the team has a planned day off on Friday, before they\u2019re back on the ice on Saturday and Sunday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Washington Capitals have officially returned to the ice at MedStar Capitals Iceplex, practicing for three straight days…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":478823,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":["post-478822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=478822"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478822\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/478823"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=478822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=478822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=478822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}